Sun conjunction Mercury ℞ in Cancer · Venus square Uranus in Gemini

The headline is the cazimi-adjacent Sun-Mercury conjunction in Cancer, separating now by less than a degree, with both luminary and messenger sitting on Castor. Mercury is combust and retrograde — severely afflicted by any honest measure — but the meeting itself does something to speech: it concentrates it, turns it inward, makes it hard to tell whether what you're saying is being clarified or simply swallowed. Castor's gift is eloquence that doesn't outlast the moment. Whatever's said today is said well and forgotten quickly, and I'd rather that be true of gossip than of contracts.

Venus in Virgo is in fall and square Uranus to the tenth of a degree. This is the sharper event, and I want to correct what I might have implied a moment ago about the day being mostly a Mercury affair — it isn't. Venus in her fall doesn't have the resources to absorb a Uranus square gracefully; expect the small aesthetic or relational jolt, the sudden reversal of preference, the person who was charming yesterday grating today. The opposition to the North Node in Pisces, still within orb, gives the disturbance a faintly fated quality without making it important.

The Moon is at home in Cancer, under the beams, in the Triplicity mansion — a martial mansion under a domiciled Moon is a strange pairing, defensive rather than aggressive, guarding the perimeter of a house one already owns. Sun and Jupiter remain in mixed reception, which softens the combustion story slightly: Mercury is burnt, but the fire it's burnt in is one Jupiter has some claim on.

Background: Jupiter opposing Pluto and trining Neptune, Uranus trine Pluto. It's the weather. I won't pretend it's the day.